Well, I had this idea in a seperate thread, and I really like the way it's working in my head, so maybe it'll survive a few minutes of public scrutiny.
Anyway, the first half of the idea is based on movement speed being altered by a number of factors. The idea I had is somewhat similar to how it works in Oblivion. You load somebody up more and they move more slowly. The strategic implications of this are bigger than the tactical, though. You can run in something like plate, but I dare you to march as quickly carrying full plate or with a caravan to carry the full plate as an army equipped in leather armor. They can wear their armor and move in it without a slow support group. The same goes for heavy cavalry, but more so. There's a reason they don't get scouting duty, scouts need to be able to run a lot/generally move quickly.
This boils down to having a base move for both infantry and cavalry, giving them a positive modifier for training, and giving them a negative modifier for the weight of their armor and other equipment. The negative modifier will be bigger for cavalry on a strategic scale because horses walking are about the same speed as people. On a tactical scale, the modifier will be about the same, so heavy cavalry will be a good bit faster than even light infantry (horses run fast even if they're loaded down so much they can't do it on a strategic scale), but this gives a reason for lightly armored troops beyond my second point, you can get a lot more strategic mobility, and supplement it with a striking core of well trained troops who have been trained to march efficiently and have a good supply train while still being well equipped to take heavy punishment.
The second half is determining LoS (EDIT: I mean the base LoS, magic items to boost it would be a great thing I heartily encourage). Normally this is determined on a unit for unit basis, but with custom building and a lack of clear sensor equivalents preclude doing it the way GalCiv 2 did. Instead, the same mechanism for movement speed could be used well here. General procedure for militaries was to have the (light) cavalry handle the scouting, ranging wide around the army. Part of the reason the confederates were surprised at Gettysburg was that Stuart went on a joyride and didn't report in for a long time. Usually, the cavalry would handle the scouting duties of the army because of their high sustained speed (the speed on the campaign map), which would let them ride ahead and examine various areas the enemy may hide. This could be represented on the campaign map by giving light cavalry a considerably higher line of sight than their slower comrades. This would allow the light cavalry to play a distinct and interesting role that is usually denied to them in games.
Combined, these two ideas would create a compelling and interesting drawback for the heaviest armor and make using guerilla tactics with light infantry feasible, while the benefits of light cavalry to an army are also increased. Magic is also an option, use it to make a heavy unit faster and their LoS will benefit as well or boost the LoS outright for more than light cavalry can do, but at a magical cost
I like the first part of your idea, about having movement speed be varied by training (conditioning) and equipment. My gut reaction wast that it was unnecessarily complicated but then I remembered that the game won't have "standard" units, so the traditional preset movement rates for each unit of other 4X games won't apply.
I'm not sure about the premise of your second part, however, that there are no "sensor equivalents". I don't know if this will be possible but, if we can equip units with weapons, why not equip them with items? Giving a unit a mechanical Looking Glass or a magical Scrying Mirror could confer a LoS bonus. Along similar lines, it might be possible to create good infantry scouts by equiping them with Camoflage Armour to make them more difficult to detect or Extra Comfy Shoes to increase their movement speed.
- Ash
Hmm interesting. Its especially important that we don't have units that outrun other units because one unit has a speed of 2 and the pursuing unit has a speed of 1. Impossible chases between units with difference in speed of 5% are also annoying.
What I meant was is that there is no item which the entirety of a unit's LoS capability is derived from. I'm all for using magic (looking glasses are something that I think would be very tricky in a nonindustrial magic-based world, and magical alternatives would be much more likely, which I thought I covered (in the last sentence as an aside, mind if I fix that?). Those would be very helpful, but would carrry the disadvantage of drawing from your mana. My comments are more for determining the base LoS of a unit type rather than detailing the only way to do something. I'm all for magical items to boost LoS and move speed, I actually feel that these key aspects are usually unfortunately treated rather poorly, so I'd love to see some creative thought on that subject, five sensor levels just weren't enough for me in GC 2. I'd love to see some neat ideas on alternate items that help out with making those more interesting, but a neat non-magical way of doing things would be good for those of us who like saving their magic up.
QFT. I like GC 2's way of dealing with map scale where about 5 or so was pretty slow, it allowed for a good amount of differences in speed without feeling too colosally huge. What would you feel about a scale like this for strategic move rates?
Heavy infantry - 4-5
Heavy cavalry - 5-6 (based off the freight trains the knights used to pull around, they weren't all that fast campaigning)
Light infantry - 5-7 (by contrast, these guys could travel light and march pretty quickly over distance if trained (can be given some fancy light armor equivalents that boost their speed/LoS/make them harder to see)
Light cavalry - 8-10 (these guys, if trained right and given good horses could move very fast, but their lack of both durability and numbers in battle makes up for it, they are hard to make an army of, but are great auxiliaries and scouts)
or is this scale off? I came up with it, I can't judge accurately . You'd need quite good light infantry to fight a guerilla campaign that can avoid heavy cavalry, while light cavalry would be able to run you down quickly, they aren't nearly as cheap and hard to fight well with (their strategic usefullness is mitigated by the fact that light (archer) infantry can beat them pretty solidly for cheaper in a tactical situation), while Heavy cavalry isn't astoundingly fast, leaving a strategic role to light cavalry, and the heaviness can still be exploited by light infantry against an army that has focused too much on heavy armor.
Weight is balanced by speed. But weight has its advantages. Even if they don't have spears, heavy infantry are resistant to cavalry. To understand why just run into a waist high concrete barrier at full tilt.
I'm a much bigger fan of keeping movement speeds low 1-2 speed like in the original MoM. Infantry = 1, Calvery = 2, super fast units and flying units = 3, ships = 4 or 5
alternativily, we could have a "speed" option on the map selection that lets you scall. slow > base 1 / fast > base 2 or 3 / Super fast > base 4 or 5
I agree on the notion of a simple speed system. I really don’t look forward to an open percentage one. If it goes into percentages then there should be absolute quarters and nothing more.
And this is why light cavalry shouldn't have nearly the shock heavy cavalry does, they don't have the mass of heavy armor and a flippin' 'uge courser (I know they weren't that big, but they were strong), they have maybe a hobby horse and not nearly the weight behind their charge.
I'm proposing those options based on my experience with the huge difference between the different move speeds in thier effect. It leaves no room for middle ground. I don't want a percentage system in any way shape or form, I'm talking relatively simple modifiers, like +1/2 from training or -1/2 from armor. The thing is, the smaller scale lets you model smaller speed differences. This is key, because otherwise all the units are roughly the same speed except for some which are a ton faster. Sure, light cavalry may be twice as fast as heavy infantry, but if all infantry is the same speed, a bunch of lightly equipped rangers could be caught by a bunch of poorly trained conscripts in heavy armor, which doesn't allow the player to do much on a strategic level. The point of the speeds I proposed is that it allows strategic maneuver to gain in importance now that we aren't limited by small memory spaces. It'll be similar levels of movement over the game world, most likely, but with a lot more room to model different units' abilities to move. Without these differences, the heaviest armor is the best, and it takes a lot of depth out of the strategic use of armies, reducing them to much more of a set of proxies for relative economic and research power and a very simple macro view of maneuver. Now that we have the memory to handle maps with as many spaces if not far more than galciv 2, we would be remiss to take out the possibility for low level strategic maneuver this offered now that we have terrain in which to employ it. I mean, hell, fighting with maneuver was fun in galciv 2, and that had no terrain to make use of, so it was relatively bland.
Depends on what you mean by simple. I really don't like the idea of all infantry being pigeonholed into a speed of one map tile per turn. Its okay to abstract the mechanics under the hood but they have to have a little complexity to begin with.
Lets say your lightly armed scouts had a speed of 2-6. 1 is normal marching speed. 2 is about jogging speed. 6 for infantry is an all out sprint. 2-6 means that your scouts can maintain a speed of 2 without getting tired. 6 is the maximum speed the scouts can achieve based on how fit they are and the burden of gear that they carry. Heavily armoured knights on foot would be 1-4. So while scouts can outrun them, if they get tired or injured thier speed would drop and the knights can run after them, at least for a short distance.
Tricky and difficult, yes. Impossible, no. All you really need are lenses, which were produced as early as the 13th century.
If there is going to be a topographical movement system then there must be some kind of stamina subsystem in place in order to prevent endless chase downs. Moreover I also think that if a retreating unit drops below 10% strength it should auto disband. Additionally that calls into question effects on movement due to weather systems.
True, but one would guess that the magical way of developing it would be much easier, which would make research into lenses considerably less important, but it would be good to see a way to improve LoS at a higher tech level then the corresponding magic items, so that really good scouts can be made without using magic, it'd just be harder, and I'm not sure as much effort would be put in, but I could see an accidental invention based on using lenses to craft fine magic items and they would be good to have in the tree to give some way of scouting without magic.
I'm pretty sure he implied that, and I like the idea a good bit, it'd add some interesting thought, and this definitely belongs on the tactical map, and it would be nice to be able to have the ability to rush your troops to the battle at the cost of having them arrive tired. It would also be interesting if knights had the speed to chase down light infantry, but because they had to sprint to do it they'd arrive at the battle tired and far less effective, while the light infantry are mostly fresh and therefore have a lot of their inferior combat strength made up for because the knights can't charge as fast. I would absolutely love to see a linked stamina system between tactical and strategic modes, that would be awesome and allow for some very interesting army uses.
Absolutely, at the very least. I think that unless a unit has been trained, if it is down to less than about 20% it should disband, and if trained stick around but have a morale penalty.
This is another great reason to have a movement system based on relatively smaller squares, because then rain could be a -1 penalty to movement/-2 in heavy armor (like agincourt) and would be very interesting. The same could go for rough terrain like mountains and woods. A smaller scale would likely result in inanity like civ 2 had (only one I had, sorry, galciv 2 brought me back into 4x from RTS and tabletop wargaming, so I don't get many references) where trying to take a slow unit over mountains meant you had a 1/3 chance of moving at all that turn, which was very annoying and random, when some smaller map squares would've made it a simpler case of just getting a good number fewer moves, but still moving some. I'm tempted to think that weather and terrain modifiers should be based off infantry/cavalry/artillery/beast status and heaviness of armor with either a scaling effect or a flat penalty, but I'm tempted to go flat penalty because the fastest of these things were the least affected, and this would be the same.
The strategical movement can also make room for some nice mechanics.
Consider improving travel speed by packing up heavy armor in carts, which would increase travel speed but reduce readiness - A surprise attack will catch the troops un- or lightly armored or maybe even unarmed.
Traveling in full armor will net less distance per turn, but if something goes wrong there are no queues at a supply wagon.
Assuming transportation like that you can move troops to the front more quickly, while you would have them travel more secure once enemy presence is likely. And it makes sneaking troops to harass the enemy supply lines a very interesting options: your lightly armed scoutish raiders can ambush an unprepared heavy infantry unit with a good chance of success
Side note: I hope the terrain is also factored in on the tactical map, not only strategically...
Rome Total war worked a bit like this. Units got tired if you made them run too much and this would make them fight worse. Problem is the endless chases still applied, and no matter how tired troops got they always ran at a minimum speed.
It makes sense when the remnants of units disband as a fighting force. Depending on thier loyalty to you they might dissapear or migrate back to friendly forces before rejoining your army.
I'd like to see extreme fatigue drop a unit down to one move a turn and incredibly low initiative judging by what the screenshot of a battle looks like (I'm assuming it's an initiative based system), so they don't get to move very often and the aren't particularly mobile when they do it. Not getting to strike very often reduces their usefulness in combat, while their inability to do much more than a slow walk is pretty apparent.
Fatigue usually frustrated me. It makes sense, but in some of them I would get angry because my guys always seemed to get fatigued quickly, and really the only way to slow it down was to wait as long as possible to charge. This made combat slow for me and made me only want to use archers because they never had a reason to run anywhere(maybe thats how generals in real life feel too for the same reason, but that isn't the point).
Correct. I always figured it was implemented wrong. There needs to be a cut-off point where when a unit becomes useless as a fighting unit that it simply fades into history. I think 20% for untrained trained units and 10% for trained. This of course is separate from the fatigue element and should be executed after any secondary combat where the unit started with a strength above that level.
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